


On Flora

by limerental



Series: Flora Verse [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, POV Aziraphale (Good Omens), mostly meta, photosynthesis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-13 20:49:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19258939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/limerental/pseuds/limerental
Summary: Aziraphale has always found it charming that, despite initial instructions containing no stipulation about naming the plants as well as the animals, the humans had gone and done it anyway and with vigorous enthusiasm.





	On Flora

“Geraniums,” Crowley says with a soft g, a drawn out 'awww' and a disdainful snarl. “Whoever authorized those ones should feel very bad about themselves. They're like tottering old men who can't find the restroom. They're like the plant equivalent of a beige knit jumper.”

“It's Ger-ain-iums, my dear,” Aziraphale says. “And I think they're quite lovely for a plant. Very sensible.”

“Guhr-awww-niums,” the demon says with exaggerated aplomb. “Of course you like them, you love beige knit jumpers and tottering old men.”

“I'll show you tottering old men.”

“Angel, you _are_ one.”

“Anyway, I am certain it's pronounced Jer-ain-iums. In this part of the world at least. Though there really are far too many names for the lot of them.”

Aziraphale gestures widely at the multitude of plants that surround them. They're in one botanical garden or another on a fine, sunny morning. Botanic gardens in no way come close to The Garden, but it's amusing to see the small ways human being have attempted to claw their way back there one carefully crafted display of blooms and foliage at a time. The angel prefers to keep a fair distance between himself and the botanical kingdom, but Crowley's barely-disguised affection for plants has led them on frequent trips and visits to the various gardens and collections of the world.

Aziraphale has always found it charming that, despite initial instructions containing no stipulation about naming the plants as well as the animals, the humans had gone and done it anyway and with vigorous enthusiasm. 

Most animals were given only their respective names in each of the many languages of the world, but plants were bestowed with proper names and common names and folk names and alternate, updated scientific names until some had dozens each and a new one every decade or so. 

Aziraphale doesn't blame the humans for their superfluous and erratic naming practices. Plants are wily, devious, and endlessly hard to pin down, even for angelic beings such as himself.

Though plants are distinct and sentient entities, their initial purpose in the grand scheme of creation, as far as anyone could tell, appeared to be Scenery. Part of the backdrop same as the sky and the stars and the mountains, so that the birds and the beasts and the humans didn't have to enact their roles in the great and ineffable divine plan in a flat, blank plane of nothing. 

After the Fall, they took on a different role, but the nature of that role exactly is still not quite clear. Both sides claim many plants as angelic or demonic agents, with some even pointing out that the humans had apparently cultivated many agents of their own. But very few from Heaven or Hell have had much success in maintaining communication with plants in any meaningful way so as to ascertain what they are plotting. 

And they must be plotting something, Aziraphale thinks. 

After all, there is still some debate about whether the Forbidden Fruit was the Almighty's idea or whether the tree itself came up with it unbidden. Or perhaps was tempted into it along with the first humans. (There is an ongoing, unrelated debate about the exact variety of tree itself, since no one had yet thought to name it.)

Crowley, for his part, has gone to greater lengths than many when it comes to fraternizing with plants, but he has never been as wary of the chlorophytic creatures as Aziraphale is and so never seemed to ask the right questions. Granted, the domesticated versions Crowley tends in his little flat are eons removed from their wild cousins.

You may have as much luck asking a toddler about particle physics as trying to discuss the Amazon rainforest with a Philodendron living in a London flat. Let alone a discussion about their role in the greater scheme of things. When Aziraphale had last tried, the viney creature simply shivered in confused silence for a beat before asking _please sir may I have some more of the nitrogen water, maybe a touch of phosphorous, a sprinkle of magnesium, thank you, sir, much obliged._

Crowley was not behind the concept of houseplants as a whole so much as he was responsible for the continued popularity of many of them. 

“Snake Plants,” he says in the botanic garden, pointing out a plant that grows in a cluster of spear-shaped leaves. Or pointy, serpent-tongue shaped leaves, if you may. “Now those are reliable, upstanding plants that can still have a bit of fun.”

“I don't trust them,” Aziraphale says. “You could have a fake one right alongside and be hard-pressed to tell the difference.”

“Devil's Ivy,” Crowley says, gesturing to a Pothos climbing its way up a scraggly palm tree. “Never have to worry about that one causing a fuss. Never a leaf out of place.”

“Angel's Trumpet.” Aziraphale beams as they come upon a tree with drooping flowers. “Now have you ever seen or smelled anything more heavenly?”

“One of ours actually. Highly hallucinogenic. Prime temptation material.”

“Ah,” says the angel.

“Though Devil's Trumpet is a bit of a toss-up surprisingly,” Crowley says. An upturned, white flower glows on a sprawling shrub. “You know, on account of the witches.”

“Right,” Aziraphale says. “Witches.” Most human witches he trusts about as much as plants, mostly on account of their ilk certainly having been in cahoots with the most untrustworthy of herbs and towering trees and various devious flora for centuries.

They step through a scalloped archway into an outdoor section of the garden, where verdant green grass stretches for hundreds of yards away from them, broken up occasionally by curly-cue swirls of beds teeming with annual flowers.

Turf grass, Aziraphale is fairly confident, is on a similar unholy tier as some of the most diabolical of demonic entities.

“Lawns,” Crowley says, drawling the word with disgust. 

“Certainly your side's doing.”

“No one's claimed responsibility,” the demon says. “You'd think something as truly evil as uninterrupted turf grass would earn big whopping promotions Down Below but nada. Zilch. Mum's the word.”

“Crysanthemums,” Aziraphale says. “I do like those somewhat.”

“Dreadful. Absolutely abominable. Preposterously untenable in every way.”

“Tell us how you really feel, my dear.”

“Have you ever looked up close at a Crysanthemum? Really looked?”

“I don't believe I would ever dare.”

“Exactly.”

The pair wander the rest of elaborate gardens, elbows brushing at times, footsteps in sync. After a time, they stop beneath an ancient apple tree, its twisted boughs just beginning to be weighed down by growing fruit.

“Do you think it remembers?” Aziraphale asks. “Same as we do?”

“That's assuming it's even the right tree. Some say, you know, pomegranate.”

“Doesn't have quite the same cadence to it.”

“No,” says Crowley, and he stares in contemplative silence up at the gnarled tree, dappled sunlight flickering across his pointed face.

The mysterious presence of the tree looms before them, feeling as ominous and unknowable as it always has, even in that first Garden as the plants spread their first fronds, drank deep with searching roots from the first springs, and swept the first glimmers of sunlight up with their fresh pigment. 

Seemed an awful lot of effort to waste on simple Scenery. Seemed an awful lot of weight to put on one, simple tree at the center of a Garden. Perhaps their true nature would remain always another of the Almighty's mysteries, never to be fully grasped.

“Absolute bastards, all of them,” Crowley says with distinct fondness in his voice, and Aziraphale, for once, can't help but share the sentiment.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[PODFIC] On Flora, and, The Tree and the Serpent, by limerental](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20161753) by [Thimblerig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig)




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